An image processing system is a system that processes digital data to provide an image. It has been used in various fields. An image processing system for ultrasound diagnosis is described herein as an example of image processing system.
Due to its non-invasive and non-destructive nature, an ultrasound system has been extensively used in the medical field to acquire internal information of a target object. The ultrasound system is used in the medical field since it can provide doctors with a high resolution image of internal tissues of the target object without the need of surgical treatment.
Typically, the ultrasound system includes an ultrasound probe, a beam former, a data processing unit, a scan converting unit and a display unit. The ultrasound probe transmits an ultrasound signal to the target object and receives the ultrasound signal reflected by the target object (i.e., an ultrasound echo signal), thereby forming a received signal. The ultrasound probe includes at least one transducer element, which operates to interconvert between the ultrasound signal and the electrical signal. The beam former analog/digital converts the received signal provided from the ultrasound probe. It then time-delays the digital signal considering the location and the focal point of each transducer element and adds up the time-delayed digital signal, thereby forming ultrasound data (i.e., RF data). The data processing unit performs various data processing operations on the ultrasound data needed to form an ultrasound image. The scan converting unit scan-converts the ultrasound data so that the data-processed ultrasound data can be displayed within the display area of the display unit. The display unit displays the scan-converted ultrasound data as an ultrasound image on the screen.
To reduce a payload of the central processing unit (CPU) which performs the data processing and scan-converting of ultrasound data, the data processing and scan-converting of ultrasound data have been recently performed by using a graphic processing unit (GPU), which is a graphic chipset optimized for electronic gaming devices.
Traditionally, the convolution between filter coefficients and ultrasound data has been performed to perform FIR (finite impulse response) or IIR (infinite impulse response) filtering. Accordingly, it took much time to perform the convolution operation. Thus, an image processing system capable of quickly performing the filtering of ultrasound data without performing the convolution between ultrasound data and filter coefficients is greatly needed.